Gas-guzzlers Are High-mileage Issue For Interest Groups

June 05, 1997|By Jim Mateja, Auto writer.

Consumer interest groups, as they do every couple of years, are having gas pains in public.

These headless, faceless, but obviously well-funded entities, are complaining that the nation's automakers are going to ruin civilization as we know it--at least the civilization not ruined by moving to the West Coast--by continuing to build and sell sport-utility vehicles that consume petrol at alarming rates.

Public Citizen, the Sierra Club and the Center For Auto Safety are urging the government to raise the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard for light trucks (including sport-utes) to 34 m.p.g. from the current 20.7 m.p.g. within 10 years.

CAFE means the fuel economy of all the trucks an automaker sells, small to big, must average at least 20.7 m.p.g. now.

Automakers, of course, argue free choice, stating that no person has been forced to buy a sport-ute or face a firing squad or, worse, watch reruns of "Baywatch."

Consumer groups insist that if automakers stopped building gas-guzzling utes in favor of teeny-tiny high-mileage coupes and sedans, there would be enough gas left for our children, our children's children and our children's children's children, who we hope will never be subjected to a shortage of fuel or "Baywatch" reruns.

The problem with most consumer-interest groups is that in piously insisting how best to save the planet, they're wasting more electricity at the microphones than we mere mortals are wasting gas at the pump.

When last we looked, for example, General Motors was producing a battery-powered car called EV-1 that's being leased in Arizona and LaLa Land.

Here's a car that burns no gas, so it's putting no pollutants into the atmosphere.

Have the consumer-interest groups set an example by lining up to lease an EV-1? Nope. GM can't give EV-1s away. Only 176 consumers interested in conserving fuel and cleaning the air have put their money where the microphone is.

What it comes down to is the automakers sell vehicles consumers want, and now they want sport-utilities that burn more gas than teeny-tiny cars.

Consumer groups clamor for automakers to build more 50-m.p.g. Geo Metros rather than 20-m.p.g. Chevrolet Blazers or Ford Explorers.

But most folks would rather travel fashionably in a Blazer or Explorer for 20 miles than plod along for 50 in a Metro.

Blazer and Explorer also offer four-wheel-drive to keep you going on dry, wet or snow-covered streets. The Metro is a tiny front-wheel-drive vehicle that gets blown off the road by an 18-wheeler in first gear as it leaves the toll booth.

Consumer-interest groups also have lost sight of recent events, such as the introduction of the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, Jeep Wrangler and soon Subaru Forester--vehicles that act like the bigger sport-utes but without the same thirst for fuel.

Should the automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles? They are--RAV4s, CR-Vs and Wranglers, which consumers are buying as fast as the automakers can spit them off the assembly line.

If consumer-interest groups want their fellow Americans to abandon sport-utes in favor of Metros, they should direct their efforts at the price and availability of fuel. Raise gas prices 25 cents a gallon and a few folks would park their sport-utes. Limit the supply of fuel and they'd purchase those teeny-tiny Metros in record numbers.

Of course, if consumer-interest groups demanded that the consumers who fund their crusades pay more for gas and be unable to fill up as often, the leaders of those groups would quickly find themselves out of work. Pardon the irony.

The question is, if automakers stopped building sport-utes and focused on teeny-tiny Metros, would consumers start buying those Metros or sit back and wait until the automakers started building and selling what consumers wanted to drive?

Think you know the answer to that.

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Jim Mateja is in Transportation Sunday, Business Monday and Cars Thursday.